Fabrication of a composite structure may include progressively building up a plurality of layers of thin composite tape or tow. For instance, a tape placement head of a manufacturing system moves over the surface of a template and deposits tapes of composite material onto the template.
Irregularities in the deposited tape may be detected by an automatic monitoring system. During detection, a portion of the tape on the workpiece is illuminated, and images of the illuminated portion are processed to determine whether the deposited tape has any irregularities. Irregularities may include discontinuities (e.g., gaps) between a recently-applied portion of tape and a previously-applied portion of tape.
The image processing may include edge detection and analysis. Such image processing is intensive.